Recruiting retired specialists back into part-time practice via telemedicine

Richard J. Santen, MD, Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S., looks at how to recruit retired specialists to practice part-time via telemedicine. Patients living in rural, underserved areas in the United States (U.S.) lack access to specialists for care of complicated medical problems. Specialists generally practice in cities and choose not to live in rural areas based on several financial, geographical, and social reasons. A potential solution to this problem involves convincing retired specialists to go back into practice part-time and use telemedicine to fill the need in these rural, underserved areas.